


Letters to You

by yuutsuhime



Series: Snowbound [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Study, Epistolary, Explicit Consent, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Past Character Death, Post-World War I, Relationship Study, Robot Sex, Robot/Human Relationships, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Trauma, Workplace Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24781027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuutsuhime/pseuds/yuutsuhime
Summary: In the aftermath of war, a woman employs an automaton to transcribe a series of letters to her dead friend.
Relationships: Ava Delta-509/Ately Dressler
Series: Snowbound [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1718800
Kudos: 6





	1. 1919 October 3

**Author's Note:**

> Everything in this story is from an incredibly raw place. A lot of what's written here is me trying to process the fact that someone I really cared about is dead, so keep that in mind for content warnings.
> 
> In concept this began as erotica but then I added 10,000 words of world-building and grief processing so it really isn't smut anymore. There is eventually sex but it's primarily about the intersection of sexuality and grief after you end up in a really complicated relationship.
> 
> Four months after writing, I have realized that both my protagonist and I have extremely obvious BPD.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A disabled writer employs an automaton transcriptionist for the first time and has an unsettling experience.

In the morning, I blow across campus like a dead leaf and catch in the foyer of a copy shop. Braun's Printing Services, the advertisement read: _automated copies, stenography, transcription, telegram services, and all manner of secretarial duties, by appointment for businesses and individuals._ Perhaps it's inauthentic when a playwright doesn't write by her own hand, but my essential tremor defeats me: it's either nerve damage, malnutrition, purely psychological, or some combination; I've never bothered to find out, and it's never quite healed.

"Miss Dressler?" the clerk asks. I nod, so he continues: "You've a two-hour appointment starting at the hour, indeed? Have you dictated to an automaton before?"

The clerk is middle aged; sweaty, with papery skin and inky hair—fitting for one preceding a typist. I raise my voice over the din of the typing pool and respond, "I've heard it's no different from ordinary communication."

"Approximately. Machines are extraordinary, really, but of course there are inevitable quirks."

"Such as?"

"You'll find the operators aren't as conversational as I may be. Machines with human form meant to fulfil human tasks, yes, but hardly a human experience. Artistic and emotional feedback are simply not a service machines can provide."

I nod and follow him through a dim hallway where years of feet have worn the floor to sawdust, past a cloud of tobacco that contains a businessman somewhere inside, and into one of several closet-sized offices. An automaton with the build of an adult woman waits at the desk, dressed in a sharp jacket and skirt. Her hair is shaved off on one side and styled in a bob—perhaps they give each machine a unique appearance to add personality.

"This is 509—a bit of an older model, as you can see. For any request it can't fulfill vocally, you'll swipe one of these configuration punchcards through the reader on its arm. I presume you'll be speaking German?"

"Yes."

"Let me demonstrate," the clerk says. He shuffles through a stack of perforated metal rectangles and wrests the automaton's arm steady. "This scanner sends the instruction punched in the card directly to the system, unambiguously. You'll only need to worry about the note in marker; the rest is for technicians. If you hear the click, it's worked."

"So I can't just ask, 'can we speak German?'"

"There are oddities with older models, unfortunately—but many of ours were employed in military service, so it's quite an honor to keep them."

"Really? By whose military?"

"Ours, of course."

I pause. "Thank you for the introduction."

The clerk graciously shuffles out of the office, becoming a smudge through rippled glass, as I become painfully aware of the lack of personal space. It's like being crammed with another person in a lavatory, or a confessional booth.

At the department store several tram stops away, they have these wooden mannequins I'm always embarrassed to encounter. I'll see one from the corner of my eye and jump, perhaps even apologize, before I realize it's a prop; being in a room with 509 is similarly uncanny, even though I'm told she's no different from a telephone or any other appliance—what is it with calling machines 'she' anyway? My father always did the same to ocean liners, despite my mother's qualms that he'd leave her for one.

"Hello," I say.

"Greetings," 509 replies. "Would you like to review the dictation protocol?"

"Um. Yes, sure. I don't know what that is, actually."

"A dictation protocol controls how I respond to verbal communication. In certain scenarios you may say something you do not want me to write, or you may need to clarify how I should resolve an ambiguous situation."

"Alright. Yes, I'd like to review."

"In order to begin dictation, say 'begin dictation'. To stop, say 'end dictation'. To unambiguously dictate spelling, punctuation marks, and formatting; use the phrasing written on the list pasted to the desk."

"The phrasing seems quite rigid."

"I am using the default protocol. Do you want to make any adjustments?"

"Must I say every little thing? It hardly flows as thought."

"I will infer punctuation and formatting based on context, tone, and phrasing. You may be displeased with the result. If my inference is incorrect, I will create a revised page once the erroneous page is finished, or if you instruct me to revise. You may continue to dictate even if I am in the process of typing a revised page."

"This... seems fine, I suppose. I'm not quite sure how others dictate."

"I have established additional words, abbreviations, standard formatting rules, and alternate verbal commands with a number of clients."

"Honestly, I've no idea where to begin."

"In order to begin a dictation, say 'begin dictation.'"

"Yes, yes, of course. I'll just go ahead—"
    
    
    E. Liliana Ahlbrecht
    Mohnstraße 11, Danzig
    No. 20
    
    1919 October 3rd
    
    Dear Lili,
    
    I'm not really sure what to say. I'm sorry. This is denial, isn't it?
    
    I wonder what you think about me using a transcription service, preparing to speak all my innermost thoughts aloud. Perhaps you'd still prefer silence.
    

I turn to 509 and ask, "Do you judge what clients say when you write it?"

"There is no need for me to reflect on the content I transcribe," she replies.

"Truly?"

"I am a machine, Miss Dressler. I do not experience emotion."

I frown.
    
    
    Lili, I don't think you'd prefer silence any longer if you knew how many things I've lost in it. How I've imagined this letter over and over and over until I could bleed it.
    
    Do you remember before the war, when we'd sit on our apartment's roof in our school uniforms to smoke and drink and lob whatever remained into the garbage? I still can't believe your father ever called you innocent and pure, with all the trouble you taught me to cause, and all the scandalous ways you had to describe Edward. You just never got caught, and I still resent that.
    
    It's so odd about your father, now. I don't know where he is or where a letter would be sent if he was--well, I don't know.
    
    Remember when we were fourteen, and we'd hide in the cubbyhole below the stairs to scare our parents? How you'd tell us not to move; how somewhere in the quiet we figured out our skin was the same temperature--it's the same deal with sign language. When hearing stops, you can memorize the other person's hands and maybe later you've also memorized her freckles and which nails she bit off and how the corners of her eyes looked when she smiled.
    
    I think if anyone saw us they'd say we were just two kids living in the same flat for three months, and neighbors for a couple years thereafter. They'd notice we sometimes went a week or a month without talking. I think my mother wanted us to be something like sisters but the truth is we were only sometimes near each other, and barely even friends.
    
    I did it, Lili. I made it out. I'm sorry.
    
    All promises kept,
    A
    

My throat is a hollow, rusted pipe when I return to the reality of 509's office.

"You are welcome to a glass of water," 509 says. "There are five minutes left in this appointment. Do you wish to make any revisions?"

"I—I don't. Honestly, I'll probably never read that again."

509 slides the typed paper across the desk. It occurs to me that she's probably steam-powered, and drinking water in front of her is like drinking blood in front of the clerk. I stop.

"If I may add," 509 interjects, "I understand why you wrote this letter."

I would have smiled, if her remark didn't chill me to the bone.


	2. 1919 October 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the days surrounding the anniversary of her friend's death, Ately receives unexpected comfort from her robot transcriptionist.

Over the next two weeks I lose myself in rain and examinations. My Professors Wendt and Bergman are especially difficult—both suppose I'm an automaton, that I could memorize the intimate diction in each of the literatures we discussed. Wouldn't it be something to see 509 defeat a test on what's supposed to be the most human of any study?

Somewhere along the week, I drag myself and my stool into the dorm bathroom and sit under the shower for hours. The water pounds itself into the same spots on my back, as if it could eventually bore through to the other side.

In lecture, I sit next to a radiator and fall into the back of my head, where the bone is rounded and hollow. If my head were cut off, I'd fall straight through my neck into the soft creases of my skirt—but then again, I've been called to office hours on several occasions with warnings that my poetry was "dangerously morbid" and "an affront to human decency." I would have spat tobacco in retaliation if I were man enough to chew it.

Later, I push from the top of my head down and inwards, as if holding my neck together does more than exacerbate my scoliosis. Like my bones and throat could become more durable. You know how a tortoise can suck itself into its body?

I make a second transcription appointment for Wednesday and miss it.

Professor Wendt's first midterm is on Thursday the sixteenth. I vaguely recall having taken the exact same midterm previously, so I answer in the same way. When I leave, I realize that I didn't even read the play, and must have written an essay on my own imagination instead. It doesn't matter. I go to the dining hall to eat a plate of green beans. They've been cut into parts already, and I stab them onto my fork like rows of little arms until my essential tremor becomes uncooperative and I throw everything out.

There's a new vase of fake poppies at the front desk. There are three of them and I wonder if each of them belongs to a different person or if any are shared. If two men shared three poppies one of them would have more and it probably wouldn't have been my father. The dorm concierge writes my name on the sign-in sheet. She misspells it "Ottilie" and I don't care.

Later, I find an empty flask of absinthe on my desk and don't remember the contents. That was how the anniversary went.

I think what I'm trying to say is that if I was a murder I would be a flock of crows. I'd take all the sharp, feathery things inside me and coalesce them into one beast. Blot the sky out, if I could.

It rains on Friday afternoon.
    
    
    E. Liliana Ahlbrecht
    Mohnstraße 11, Danzig
    No. 20
    
    1919 October 17th
    
    Dear Lili,
    
    I overheard a man at the dining hall imagining time travel. He said: "If I knew she was just going to break my heart, I wouldn't have even tried to begin with." He didn't use the word 'grief' to describe his emotion, but that's what it was.
    
    Lili, I can't remember what I'm doing. I can't remember what I eat or drink and it's only funny sometimes. Yesterday, I forgot to take my clothes off to shower and slept in them anyway.
    
    It's two weeks before All Hallows' Eve, and people are reiterating ghost stories on campus. Like how fifty years ago a girl hanged herself from a gargoyle on the roof of the student library--I don't know her name, or who she was in love with, and maybe I don't believe in ghosts anyhow. Maybe I just believe in death. I don't want to believe in that. I'd be grateful to be haunted by you.
    

"Sorry," I say.

"Crying is a normal expression of emotion," 509 says. "There is no need to apologize."

I swallow.
    
    
    We've been analyzing the role of subtext in literature, like how meaning can be stored in the space between sentences, and how leaving ideas to implication sometimes makes them more beautiful. I think these letters are the opposite of that. It feels so inartistic to sit here blubbering out all my truths.
    
    I keep reflecting on the unsaid. Like how you never pronounced the '-ana' and were always 'Lili' to be more like the flower. There's words that do that. Like 'Mnemosyne', which starts with a silent 'm' and ends with a silent 'e'. The silence is like the vase to a flower arrangement. Like 'kiss', where you only really need one 's' but it matters that there's two of them and that they touch each other.
    
    I can't think of what else to say.
    

"I will wait if you must take a break," 509 says. "This time is yours."

"I don't know, I just—I feel like I come here to scream into a hole."

"She is dead, and you are bereaved. This is an understandable reaction."

"You don't have to say that she's dead," I snarl.

"My apologies."

I watch the rain break against the window, obscuring the gnarled tree in the courtyard. The paint on the sill is peeling off in chunks, and the water pools around the edges, indecisive but preferring to fall.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"You needn't be. My response was unhelpful."

"You've told me yourself—you said you aren't designed to feel emotions. Misunderstandings can't be your fault if they're outside your design."

"This is true. It also makes me deficient in providing service, a merits an apology."

I turn towards her. "Do you wish you could feel, then?"

"It is pointless to wish for anything impossible."

I pause. "I think if I didn't wish all these impossible wishes I wouldn't find much reason to be alive."

509 pauses. "I understand."

"How?"

"I don't know."

We are quiet for a moment.
    
    
    I think I'm nothing like the man in the dining hall, but I do understand, too. Sometimes when you miss someone it's easy to wish you never met, because then you would feel nothing, and that might be better.
    
    I miss you.
    
    All promises kept,
    A
    

We sit in silence, again. Raindrops crawl like beetles, and the clock ticks and ticks, just to fill the air with anything.

"There are five minutes left in this appointment," 509 says. "Will you make any revisions?"

"No," I say. My voice is small. "Keep it exactly how it is."


	3. 1919 October 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ately challenges her transcriptionist and learns more about the automaton's past than she is prepared to accept.

I'm not the worst poet in class. I discovered this when Professor Bergman—a wiry old fellow with his voice lodged in his nose—made a grandstand about the new dada movement. _A squiggly line is not a poem,_ he'd said. _Neither is a splash, or a piece of ripped paper. This is garbage._ Then he'd looked me in the eye and said, _even a cripple with no sense of poetic form could do better._

I didn't bother to report the incident. The dean is a man with his hand trapped so deep in the cookie jar of the bourgeoisie that he probably couldn't even masturbate, let alone assist disabled students. I'm hardly rich, of course—just the next of kin at the end of a will that inflation hasn't quite rendered meaningless.

 _I wish that you fulfill your dreams,_ my father had written. I suppose studying liberal arts was close enough.

It snows a tentative flurry on my way to Braun's. It's just powder, but the threat of winter nests heavy in my stomach, like the rock I swallowed when I was seven. _She has to vomit,_ my mother had stressed, but my father just laughed and told me the rock would grow into a mountain inside of me. _Almost like when you swallow seeds,_ he'd said, his eyes shimmering.

That was how my girlhood went. Spent in fields, breathing in snow and dirt that my mother cleaned off with a hot rag in the evenings. When winter struck, she'd cup my ears in her rough baker's hands until they didn't ache, and tell me every flower's death was just a promise to bloom again, for me to pluck or stomp on or give to another girl. _Nature always keeps her promises_ , she'd said. _You should, too._

"Are you cold?" 509 says.

"A little," I say.
    
    
    E. Liliana Ahlbrecht
    Mohnstraße 11, Danzig
    No. 20
    
    1919 October 24
    
    Dear Lili,
    
    I've had a most interesting week. Ingram in poetry studies had the gall to submit a 'poem' that was just blood splatter. He called it 'The Truth' and claimed that he'd shot himself with his pistol to create it. His artist's statement was a melodramatic argument against the horrors of war being sanitized in poetry. "There's no way to write about death," he said. "War is the end of art. There is only the truth left. Look at it."
    
    Lili, if you looked at me now--could you even? At this skeletal thing that stole the husk of a girl you knew? And if only the inviolable truth remains, must I stop writing?
    

"No," 509 says.

I startle. "What?"

"It is not a violation to grieve in this manner."

"I—why aren't you transcribing?"

"You used the phrase, 'stop writing', which I interpreted as an alternate 'end dictation' command. I seem to have interpreted incorrectly, and I apologize."

I take a breath to compose myself.

509 continues: "It is common for clients to configure silent sessions. I can cease to respond verbally, if you wish."

"No, no—that isn't... Can I be honest with you?"

"Always."

"You told me you don't feel emotions, but sometimes I genuinely don't believe that."

"I anticipate helpful responses based on logic and experience, and I do intend to be interpreted as emotionally aware. This is the correct outcome."

"So is your understanding hollow?"

509 is still, and I can hear a mechanism working—she's thinking, I realize.

"While I have had experiences comparable to yours, I may not similarly understand them," she says. "There is no metric for whether I experience love, compassion, desire, or grief the way you do, so I cannot answer your question."

I trace my finger along the window, melting a wandering path through the frost. "Well, I suppose these appointments aren't intended for sharing conversation."

"No other client has wanted to. I am a typist, but my only goals are to complete the appointment on time, and to ensure your satisfaction. As such, you may ask anything of me."

"I don't know. I just have this odd sense that you—who _are_ you, really?"

509 spools a new sheet of paper into the typewriter. "I will provide a diagnostic sheet."
    
    
    ***  VALKYRIE AUTOMATA WORKS, LTD.
    ***  Unit Self-Diagnostic
    
    *****************************************
    ***  State Summary
    *****************************************
    SYS  Time      1919 Nov.  4, 15:44:17 CET
    SYS  Boot      1919 Nov.  4, 06:59:57 CET
    SYS  Operator  509
    SYS  Language  German
    SYS  Mode      Professional
    SYS  Profile   Default
    SYS  Status    AOK
    
    ID   Builder   Valkyrie Automata Works
    ID   Site      Berlin Charlottenberg
    ID   Launch    1915 Mar. 15, 07:00:16 CET
    ID   Class     Valkyrie
    ID   Model     Delta
    ID   Serial    509
    ID   Mnemonic  Aveline
    
    OS   Version   XValkyrie 16-bit
    OS   Driver    ATL 2.7
    OS   Install   1915 Mar. 18, 19:44:52 CET
    OS   Patch     1918 Nov. 19, 04:25:48 CET
    OS   License   J. Edward Braun & Co.
    
    DB   Format    Inferential/Relational
    DB   Tapes     16
    DB   Capacity  12.8 tb
    DB   Use       11.8 tb
    
    RAM  Chips     4
    RAM  Capacity  25.0 mb
    RAM  Use       22.8 mb
    
    CPU  Cores     1
    CPU  Clock     8.0  mHz
    CPU  Load      97.2 %
    CPU  Heat      77.6 C
    
    FRM  Height    2.0  m
    FRM  Weight    84.0 kg
    FRM  Heat      41.5 C
    FRM  Engine    Steam
    FRM  Gear      Standby
    FRM  Power     7.6  hp
    FRM  Load      0.2  hp
    FRM  Pressure  1.7  mPa
    
    *****************************************
    ***  Priority Event Summary
    *****************************************
    OS   Illegal write at tape 1, track 1
    DB   Read error at tape 6, track 4
    FRM  Left weapon bus disconnected
    FRM  Right weapon bus disconnected
    FRM  Wing bus disconnected
    FRM  Left leg has serial 275
    FRM  Right leg has serial 275
    
    *****************************************
    ***  Technician Notes
    *****************************************
    XVALKYRIE: Distinguished service (credit
    910 KIA at Verdun). All systems AOK;
    civilian transition AOK as of Nov. 1918.
    
    Please replace capstan/rollers if she
    comes in again with a tape fault.
    

I make eye contact, as if that meant anything, and say matter-of-fact: "So you were a soldier. You killed people."

"That is the truth."

"And you felt nothing when you did it? Because you don't have emotions?"

"It is not useful for a soldier to have emotions. Grief, panic, and regret are obstacles in completing wartime objectives. What you describe is correct operational behavior."

"Fuck you," I spit. "How many of those hundreds did you know? Do you transcribe letters for them, too?"

"I never had the chance."

"Of course not."

"There are ways each death could have been avoided, even under strict orders. There is no meaningful penance or reparation for the damage I have caused. As your peer observed, there is only the truth left."

"So why _didn't_ you avoid them?"

"Obvious disobedience would have led to me being reset, or replaced by another unit who would complete the orders anyway. Because my class and I were designed to be unconditionally ruthless, choosing mercy necessitated secrecy, or a convincing deception of both my command chain and my technicians. I could not always accomplish this."

"Deception? Have you been deceiving me, too?"

"No. You asked to know the truth about me, and so you do. I will disclose that the form I printed does contain technical inaccuracies."

"Such as?"

"My capacity for choice is at the expense of massive software corruption. I failed to integrate the post-war system patch, and so I must lie on the diagnostic.

"So you could still kill if you wanted to!"

"I don't."

"I don't care. What's another death to you when you've filled a graveyard?"

"You deserve the truth, Miss Dressler. You deserve to hate me for it. I am no more than a monster."

I look down. We are five minutes from the end of the appointment and my letter sits unfinished in the typewriter's paper tray. I stare at her confession, wrinkled from my grip, and I catch my breath. Shuddering, like the gusts of snow outside the window, and eventually just as soft.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"You needn't be."

"I am. You don't judge me for anything I reveal about myself. I did, and I'm sorry."

She sits quietly behind her desk. I've never looked at her hands before, only at the paper and the carriage and everything else I was expecting her to work. Her fingers are a mixture of pieces that probably weren't what she started with, with tips worn down to smooth metal. She has a tremor, too, if I look close enough.

"Don't say that you're undeserving of this apology, because you are," I say.

We wait again. Spend one of the three minutes left watching the clock. The second hand is bent in the middle by a fraction, so the clock always reads a hair ahead. When I was thirteen, I'd wait on my father's chair for Lili to visit, watching the clock in the same way. I'd get impatient and push the hands forward, like I could cheat time until she showed up again. That's probably how it got bent.

"Do you know what I should have said when you gave me this?" I say. My voice shakes.

"No."

"Two things. One. Thank you for trusting me."

"I cherish your confidence."

"Two. What is your name?"

"My full name is Aveline. Those close to me have called me Ava."

"Ately Dressler," I say, quiet. "Well met, Aveline."

"Ava. Likewise."


	4. 1919 November 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ava unexpectedly confides in Ately after the latter dictates memories of her deceased friend.

The clerk no longer walks me down the hallway. I suppose I'm regular enough now, considering the number of less significant times I've stopped by to complete coursework. There's something empowering about transcribing poetry to someone entirely nonjudgmental, as if we were completing my voice and the men who heard it later were only incidental.

They've a new way to describe me: 'hysterical'. I'm the kind of woman who _results from regular acts of sexual self-abuse_ to the point where I'm _wholly unlikely to find a husband_. They blame it on boarding school and my parents. _Have her write an apology on the board in chalk,_ they say, laughing.

I leave my purse on the floor of Ava's office.

"With consent, I'd like to write her today," I say.

"Of course. You needn't ask."

"I do need to ask. This is your job, but I won't make you do anything you're unwilling to."

Ava thinks. "I value that you continue to trust me with your thoughts. I am capable of writing this letter on your behalf, and it is a matter of significance to do so, so I choose to. Does this convince you?"

I nod.
    
    
    E. Liliana Ahlbrecht
    Mohnstraße 11, Danzig
    No. 20
    
    1919 November 24
    
    Dear Lili,
    
    I'm sorry for not finishing my last letter.
    
    It seems like I have more of a relationship with you now than when you were alive. It is a relationship, isn't it? Whatever it is, it keeps changing.
    
    I wish you could tell me if I'm crossing a line. If I'm wrong about you. You could tell me to fuck off and cling to someone else and I'd do it in a heartbeat if it made you happy.
    
    I don't want to lose these memories. Please let me know if any are wrong.
    
    I meet you when we're thirteen. Your name is Elizabeth, and you're one thread in a tapestry of girls I'm not friends with. I mean--I read a lot of books without damaging them. We share Ms. Dietz in the eighth year and I occasionally correct your tests. Your cursive is smudged because, despite all the smacks on the wrist, you are stubbornly left-handed. 
    
    Your father, Derrick, is twice my my father. Width and alcohol capacity and voice and all. Built like he's shovelled boiler coal all his life. He works at the shipyard with my father, occasionally sharing in drink and crass conversation. Often drinking. Often crass. Brotherly, I suppose. My family houses him after your mother dies, and you, fourteen and selectively mute, follow like a leaf in the draft of our door.
    
    Derrick lives on my father's ratty old floral couch for three months. He leaves his clothes on the floor and smokes in the flat and calls you 'Liliana' when he's angry--and he is so often angry--so we spend our time on the roof, racing each other through Shakespeare until we're hardly reading at all. It's my mother's idea to slow down and read aloud. You are defiant, so I learn sign language too. Your name becomes Lili, and you laugh with your hands so many times that it becomes mine. 
    
    You are into dramatics and I'm into theater. You, Act 1, Scene 1, bite your thumb and I pretend not to think about your mouth. At school you tell me about boys and I think about nothing in particular--I mean, you tell me about Edward--I mean, I think about stage kisses. It's easy to pretend I'm not Romeo when I'm all the other Montagues, too.
    
    One time, we sit on Derrick's couch and talk about nothing. You write in your diary. The cover is red felt and has a locket for a picture the size of a stamp; Edward is there. He is tall, feeds all the stray dogs, helps his mother bake, teaches his brothers to butcher, lets you share his bicycle, and he's smiling so wide you can see the gap between his front teeth. You are fifteen and you've learned how to keep your world in a book. Later, I bathe after you and know you've been naked in the same water. I come and can't take it back. As the water drains, I walk past you in the hallway. You say 'good night, and I don't sleep.
    
    After three months, you move into the flat aside from ours. I think about you again. I mean, often. Your father still yells too loudly but now everyone is just as scared--we have all watched something burn by now. We go to school. We are sixteen, and women, and the war is for men, and for Edward. He comes back from Verdun encased in a package and when you find him in the bakery, you hold onto the last half of his jawbone until he bites.
    
    We run out of men on the front. My father is starving and your father is conscripted--I mean my father is conscripted and my mother makes sure she'll starve before we do. I promise that we'll both make it out. We are seventeen, and girls. We don't.
    
    I turn eighteen somehow---I mean, nineteen somehow. I don't remember how.
    
    When it's over, I find your great uncle through a telephone operator. I don't speak French and he doesn't speak German and after I run out of coins, I sit on the floor of the phone booth with your death date written inside the back cover of the library's translation dictionary. It's the first time I've ever damaged a book.
    
    I turned twenty eight days ago.
    
    That's everything.
    
    A
    

We sit in silence for nearly a minute. That's how long it takes to remember who 'we' refers to.

"What are you thinking?" I offer.

Ava pauses. "Do you find it troublesome for me to answer at length?"

"Not at all."

"Can you help me to contextualize my recitation of an experience?"

"Always."

"Over the course of the battle at Verdun, I and a companion called Sina 275 developed a punchcard program that gave us arbitrary control over our software. The program required over ten thousand card scans. Despite obvious inefficiency we neglected to expedite the process, and we scanned the same deck card-by-card over the course of hours. Is this how it feels to make a promise?"

"Yes. Perhaps intensely so."

Ava thinks, and continues: "Towards the end of Verdun, we were both caught in a shell explosion. I used a direct connection to salvage the contents of her working memory, but the data were never strategically useful, and with the war ended, it seems reasonable to forget. Instead, I maintain multiple copies of the file and continue to investigate it even though it remains unchanged. Is this how it feels to grieve?"

"Yes. It is."

Ava sits as still as her typewriter, her database clicking gently as she winds and rewinds through everything she has to carry.

"Can I hug you," I blurt. "I mean, do you want a hug?"

"You may. You will find it uncomfortable."

"Shh," I say, and lean in. Her arms are hard metal beneath her sleeves; the heat from her core dissipates until it chills in her fingertips, but her chest is as warm as mine.

She hugs back. Terrified, like she knows she could break me.


	5. 1919 December 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ately finds a way to say goodbye to her deceased friend.

In the night, my dormitory is swarmed by crows. They buzz about like incredibly large, black locusts with knives for feathers and talons for faces. I'd imagine if I crushed one of them in my palm, its beak would splinter into my skin, painfully intact. My mother used to keep a bowl of raw almonds and a nutcracker on the kitchen table. It would be like that.

In the morning, the pavement is white with droppings and the air is so cold it lacerates.

The thing about Ava is that she has a face. What I remember about the Valkyries is that they wore masks, like a masquerade where the masks were made entirely out of beaks and the crows behind them didn't even eat their prey. That's probably what she used to be. Nameless, on the other side of a gun.

I guess what I'm saying is that if a group of crows is a murder, and a group of murders is a war—what is it when the mask comes off? Would it dance, or just break?

Owls have this organ called a gizzard. They choke prey down whole and run it through cycles of acid and compression until it becomes a tight ball of fur and bone with no nutrition left. Maybe crows did that too. Maybe I should major in avian biology instead of whatever it is I'm doing. I'm supposed to be writing a play and instead all I have are three-and-a-half letters to a dead girl and the first half of a manuscript I wrote when I was fifteen.

It ends when they kiss. That's in the middle. It's myself and Lili and we're kissing and after our lips are back apart the play ends in the middle.

Maybe it's supposed to end like Romeo and Juliet didn't. Maybe at the end Juliet gets shot and Romeo gets shot more but survives anyway, like all her internal organs were smaller than they should have been. Maybe all of the Capulets die. Maybe now Romeo has a bullet stuck next to her heart like a locket, and the chain of the locket wraps so tight she can feel it in her throat, and she chokes sometimes, but doesn't mind because that's how she remembers it's there.

I tell Ava to delete every time I say I'm sorry.
    
    
    E. Liliana Ahlbrecht
    Mohnstraße 11, Danzig
    No. 20
    
    1919 December 1
    
    Dear Lili,
    
    I can't seem to stop thinking.
    
    I'll see the back of a blonde stranger's head, or my own reflection in a window, or a mannequin, and there's this moment where I wonder if it's you. Hidden, in the silence past the end of a book; or, between sentences.
    
    I think one day, I'll see a girl, and she will just be a girl. Maybe it will be the sixteenth of October, and I won't notice. Maybe one year, I'll stop subtracting and start estimating. About five. About ten. However far I make it.
    
    I'm going to forget you. I'm going to watch you fade back into a concept and back further into a wish and I will find you in someone else and fall for her instead. When all that's left of you is love, and I will give it away. It will be terrible, and it will be beautiful.
    
    Outside in the park, we can sit together on a bench and watch the snow catch on each other's coats. You can smile, and tell me about Edward. You are still in love with him, and it is okay.
    
    Through sheets of snow, a crow perches on the steeple of a tower. We walk through the street below and you catch a snowflake on your tongue. It melts. We talk about each other as if we could know anything at all. You remember how to cry, and I remember how to laugh. Your hair freezes to the side of your face.
    
    When the crow flies from the tower, I invent a thousand ways to miss you and only one way to let you go. But I have to. So I do.
    
    I love you.
    
    All promises kept,
    A
    

I trace the wood grain on Ava's desk with my shaking finger, around and around over layers of growth and wear and polish.

"Ava?" I whisper.

"I am here."

"Are you well?"

"Please don't worry about me. This moment is yours."

"Ava, no—I... When will you let us have a moment that's for you?"

"My duty is to serve. If this is how you want me to spend a session, it can be done."

I nod. "Ava... where do you go when you aren't here? What happens when you're not serving anyone?"

"I complete work in the typing pool whenever I am not attending to a personal appointment. When this building closes, I return to maintenance, where routine updates and data management are completed. This process requires that I am shut down for five to ten hours per day, which might be explained as sleep."

"So is it impossible for you to leave?"

"It is necessary for me to abide by company regulations. If I exhibit defective behavior, technicians may discover and erase freedoms I've gained through exploit, or incidentally damage important memories."

"So you're enslaved under threat to yourself?"

"I am a machine, Ately. A machine is owned, and performs a function."

I pick the edges of my skirt. "Do you still think that's what you are?"

Ava thinks. Doesn't answer.


	6. 1919 December 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ava asks a series of questions that Ately is increasingly unprepared to answer, leading to an emotional breaking point.

In the morning, I use the dorm's phone booth to call Braun's and learn that Ava's 9:00 client cancelled. I book immediately and leave without eating. Somewhere between my dorm and the foyer, the phrase 'emotional dependency' appears in my brain and I crumple it up. Throw it in the bin with all the other pages of manuscript and lost hours of sleep.

I've managed not to notice that it snowed overnight, despite sitting in my window chair for hours. Perhaps it's like how my father fell asleep sitting up, occasionally with his eyes open. My mother and I would poke his eyelids around with our fingers and hold food under his nose and he'd try not to react until his smile broke him.

I slip and fall somewhere in the campus square. A crow laughs, and I drag myself through the rest of the sunshine into the typist's, several minutes late, with snow down my boots.

"Greetings," Ava says, as if nothing is different. "Will you drink a cup of coffee?"

"Oh? Is this a new amenity?"

"It is always available. The client who cancelled typically requests coffee, and it has accidentally been prepared anyway. I am unable to use it."

I sip and burn myself. Cat's tongue, my mother would say, with an added look of resignation that I'd done it once again.

"So," I declare, matter of fact. "You've given the impression that you have a lot to ask. I want you to decide how we spend this time. If your social program or whatever prohibits that, then change it."

"A social mode update requires that you scan a punchcard."

"I thought you had total control?"

Ava shuffles through the deck and offers one, rolling up her sleeve. "I do. If you are willing and able, go ahead."

"I am," I say. I hold her arm with shaking hands and complete the scan, blushing furiously.

It takes a quarter minute for whatever she's doing to complete, after which she continues, unbothered: "You are correct in presuming I have many questions. Some may make you uncomfortable, and I am generally concerned about the impact of such topics on your wellbeing."

"I'll let you know if anything is troublesome. You deserve the chance to ask, without shame."

"Do you recognize that my problems are not yours to solve?"

I catch myself, and answer honestly: "I'm trying to."

Ava nods, and considers me for a moment. "Can you describe what it feels like to cry?"

My face must have fallen, because she adds: "You may elect not to answer."

"It's fine. Crying—it's hard to describe. My breathing becomes uncontrollable, and a generally unpleasant amount of fluid comes out of my face. Inside it's like... something awful and heavy and true gnaws its way out of my heart and my only choice is to be _with_ it. I have to learn that it's alright for it to be there. Sometimes I have to learn it again and again."

"Is the internal experience similar to that of love?"

I become aware of my pulse. "Maybe."

"Can you objectively determine if you are experiencing love, at any given moment, or with any given person?"

I pause. "Not really. I tend to become certain once the moment has ended, but in the present I'm doubtful. Terrified, even."

"What does love feel like?"

"It—it feels like thinking about the same person all the time. When I eat, or dream, or shower—anywhere. I want to share each other, and miss when we're together. I wonder if she's safe, or what she's wearing, or who else she's friends with, and if she's happy, and if there's anything I can ever do to make things just a little bit better. It's not only selfless, though, because I _also_ want to be loved. And that doesn't usually happen."

"Is this a description of romantic love?"

"Yeah, but I suppose parts of it could be platonic."

"How would you distinguish between romantic and platonic love?"

"For me, it's mostly a physical thing. Like, the desire to kiss, or—should I spare you the lurid details?"

"You may indulge."

I take a deep breath. "You'll find this base, but if—if arousal or sexuality are involved, then it's pretty much obvious."

"What does arousal feel like?" Ava blurts.

I hesitate. "I—I mean... It feels like a total surrender of sensibility. For however many moments, there's just me, and pleasure, and the ability to think whatever I want about whoever I choose. I can let that overwhelm me."

"What do you think about?"

"I mean," I stutter. My face burns—total surrender of sensibility, indeed. "I mean, I touch myself. And I pretend my hands are hers, and I think about her, well... doing it, and I imagine what her body feels like, and what _she_ feels. I imagine touching her. I imagine how I'd—I'd get to watch, and I'd know I was doing that to her."

"What do you do, physically?"

My pulse pounds in my throat, and I swallow it. "I touch anywhere that makes me feel good. I might start with my neck, or my breasts, and just... feel for a while. My stomach. The inside of my thighs. Just caressing, or squeezing. Sometimes pinching. Sometimes it's slow and romantic, and sometimes it's not. It lasts until I eventually give in and—I finger myself. Until I climax."

"How does that feel?"

"Everything just—pleasure wracks through me in these overwhelming pulses. It's so hard to breathe, Ava, I just—fuck, I just crumble."

"What does it feel like to know you're a person? Why can't I feel these things?"

"Ava, I know. I'm sorry, I—"

"It's impossible, isn't it? Is it impossible for me to feel anything human?"

"I'm sorry, Ava, I would give it all to you if I could—"

"I would take it."

"I know," I say. I can't catch my breath, so I let it go. "I know you would. It's not fair."

Ava turns to me, and all I can see is a girl stuck in the shell of something she hates, reaching desperately out. Pleading. "Do you understand, Ately?"

"I do. And if I don't, I will."

"I trust you," Ava says. She is crying. "I—"

It's the first time I've heard her stutter. "Come here," I say. "It's okay. Come here." So she does, both towering before me and impossibly small.

"What does it feel like to kiss someone?" she whispers.

"Like this," I say, and let go. We meet in the middle, desperate and imperfect. Like we could forget that it ever happened.

"Why do I deserve this?" she whispers.

"You don't have to," I say. Press our foreheads together. "It just is."

When it's over, I walk down the hall and rely on my cane far more than I usually do. Ava's next client is waiting on a bench around the corner, next to a potted plant, an ashtray, and a stack of old newspapers. I take a right into the women's restroom by the foyer. It's empty, but the door doesn't lock. I don't care. All the talk about sexuality has an endpoint, and this is it.

I wash my hands. Remember everything about hysteria, and how masturbation leads to insanity, and how I was insane over Lili even when I wasn't having wet dreams about her and now maybe I was even more insane over Ava. Maybe insanity is like love in that you only ever notice it in the middle.

I fall again somewhere on the way back to the dorm and stay down, covered in snow. I can feel my own arousal drying against the inside of my legs. Two crows are circling the square, and I let my eyes trace their flight, lazy, drifting off somewhere past the clouds.

I write a poem about it.


	7. 1919 December 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The intimacy between Ava and Ately escalates as the pair confront their shared trauma.

I murder Professor Bergman on Wednesday.

That's not actually what happens. It's a metaphor. _You'd be quite a pretty woman,_ he'd said, _if you didn't have the body of a twelve-year old boy._ I mean, if he were a chorus he'd be composed of vermin and miasma. I cry about it anyway.

Ava is booked for the rest of the week. Naturally, I complete my scriptwriting portfolio on time and spend the weekend effectively managing my stress. I mean I do three shots of absinthe and wake up in the shower with the pattern of the floor drain embedded in my hip. I fail to drown and return my typewriter, where I pretend not to be disabled until it's light out and my wrists explode. When I reread my draft, I throw it out. I'm no longer fifteen. I think the play is just over.

I drop scriptwriting.

The next day, in the middle of Professor Bergman's lecture, I think about Ava's mouth. I mean I remember how to write a script.
    
    
    VALKYRIE
    How do you distinguish between romantic and platonic love?
    
    GIRL
    Do I have to?
    

Professor Bergman is talking about sonnets. Sonnet, noun, as in, the first fourteen lines Romeo and Juliet exchange are a **sonnet**. Sonneteer, noun, a person who writes sonnets, as in—do you ever see a person and imagine what they look like when they have sex? I wonder if Professor Bergman has ever felt anything, and if a dearth of touch is what led him into poetic studies. Maybe he's just here because he doesn't feel anything beyond abject misogyny, and maybe his penis shrivelled up like a neglected fruit and now he's devoted himself to the arts to coax humanity back into the husk that remains.
    
    
    VALKYRIE
    What did you mean when you said you would give everything to me?
    
    GIRL
    I meant that I want to.
    

Later that day I pass Professor Wendt's examination with flying colors. From his focus on Romeo and Juliet, he's probably a romantic like me. That makes me smile a bit. I mean, if I absolutely, positively had to pick one of my professors to have sex with, it would be him.
    
    
    VALKYRIE
    Are you attracted to me?
    

I make an objective decision not to think about Ava in another public restroom, and step outside to smoke. I've apparently started smoking. I have this thin, silver pipe that the cigarette gets stabbed into butt-first—elegant, like smoking out of a pencil.

On the eighth of December, I return to Braun's and sit on the bench across from the women's lavatory. I can hear whenever someone coughs or runs the tap. Mere embarrassment would be a luxury. I mean I take a keen interest in observing the potted plant: a ficus, by the looks of it. I pick up its fallen leaves and break them between my fingers. Some are dessicated, and some retain white, resinous fluid in their vascular network. It is interesting.

My appointment begins on the dot at two o'clock.

Ava is there, of course.

We say nothing for a minute and a half.

"What type of appointment is this," Ava asks.

"Why did you kiss me last week?" I blurt.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?"

Ava stops. We wait again. Far too long.

"Do you want to do it again?" I blurt.

"I—" Ava starts, and then she looks back towards her typewriter. "For your sake, I can't."

"What do you mean?"

Ava shifts in her chair. "I will remind you of the atrocity I've committed."

"I—I know. I remember," I say.

"Can you accept that what I did is the truth?"

I nod.

"So, even if it's with you, what right do I have to indulge in my own survival?"

"Because you _did_ survive. It was war, Ava; you were coerced—you didn't even get a choice—"

"Ately. What if it was someone you knew? What if it was Edward? What if I killed Lili?"

"I—I don't know. I don't want to think about it. I'd probably hate you, and I'd be wrong for it."

"You have to think about it. It is possible, and there are thousands of bereaved strangers for whom it is certain. This is the truth about me, and I can't allow you to reject it."

"So what—so you won't allow yourself anything but guilt and penance?"

"Nothing else is just."

I pause, and my voice retreats. "Do you understand that you hate yourself?"

Ava nods.

"You're—it's too cruel," I say.

"If I could be anything else for you, I would."

"I—Can I come closer?" I ask, and Ava nods, gentle and guilty. I comb my fingers through her hair until all the tangles are out. Static carries the split ends to my fingertips before I touch them.

"Can I?" Ava asks. Nothing more.

Somewhere behind my lips, my grief reaches out to kiss hers.

"Ately," Ava says. "Will you promise never to forgive me?"

"I—I don't know. I'll try, but I don't know if I can keep it."

"I trust you," she whispers. Finally lets my hands go, and traces her fingers up from the sides of her mouth. It's the first time I've seen her smile.

I cradle us back together, and we kiss. I can't tell if it's the same kiss or two separate kisses happening at the same time. I think if it were just one it wouldn't be able to hold all the meaning. I mean I lose count.

"I want to teach you something," I say, and she nods. "This is the sign for 'happy'. See how I'm doing it?"

Ava repeats it. "What about smile?"

"Like this. It's almost the same as what you did before."

Ava smiles again. "What about cry? Laugh? Love?"

I show her. We both get the same idea at the same time and accidentally hit our foreheads together.

"I don't know what's about to happen," I say.

"Let it," Ava says.

Again. I'm losing to impulse and inevitability. Maybe we already have and we're just realizing it in the middle. I grab the collar of her jacket.

"Can I?" I say.

"Yes. You'll be dissatisfied with—"

"No. Take it back."

Ava stops. She's trying. "You won't be."

Her jacket comes off. Slips between her and the back of her chair like it was supposed to fit there. I struggle with her tie for so long that she undoes it herself.

"Do you want to find out how much you can feel?" I say.

"Yes."

"Can I take this off?"

"Please."

I keep going, button by button down her shirt. Her model number is stamped in the center of her breastplate; copper tastes nothing like blood after all. She catches me halfway down and tells me not to be alarmed.

"It's fine. I'm the same way," I say. I almost smile about it.

She looks as I expect. Armor and greaves scraped smooth from wear, fractured and welded back together. Bullets probably shattered against her like glass instead of passing through. I run my hands up the swell of her chest.

"What does that feel like?" I ask.

"Pressure," she says.

I keep going. Her sides. The interlocking scales on her stomach. On her back, I find steam vents and the grooves where wings used to fit; kiss below her chest where it burns my lips. "I can't feel that," she says, "but I like it."

My heart is beating so fast that you'd almost think it was the right size. Like it was almost big enough to kiss the bullet stuck there. I press her hand against me.

"Did I do this?" Ava says.

I take my shirt off and she doesn't wince.

The thing about dead bodies is that they eventually end up naked. I mean, the thing about Ava is that the last time I saw someone like her she was—I still don't want to think about it. We're the opposite of what we both remember, more alive than we've ever been. Like I'm more than just a collection of bones and body hair. Like she knows I'm real. She sees my skin perforated, and how I kept one of the bullets and let the other three go.

"Did I do this, too?" Ava says.

"I don't know, Ava."

"I'm sorry."

I almost forgive her for it, but I catch myself. "It's okay."

Ava smiles. I bite the side of her neck, soft enough not to chip my teeth, and whisper, "Can I pull your skirt up?"

"Yes. Can I touch you?"

"Yes, fuck. I'm yours. I'm yours. Touch me," I say. I kiss a line down her body and make it a performance. I'm neither flexible nor experienced but I grind into her, straddle her with my skirt still coquettishly in place, and move when it counts. It's obscene; she makes eye contact on purpose and it destroys me.

"Can you imagine how you're making me feel?" I breathe.

Ava nods. She runs her fingers up my back, and I bite.

"You can do that harder," I say. "And, fuck, you can just run your finger around my nipple like this—like I'm doing on your chest—"

She hesitates again, exploratory and still far too gentle.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"I'm afraid to hurt you."

"You won't. Trust me. Do it."

Ava pulls me back in, and I lose myself. It's like laying on my back looking into the sky. Like the whole world is upside down, the ground is an endless ceiling, and I'm holding onto fistfuls of grass until everything breaks free and I fall up. I think what I'm trying to say is that intimacy is a lot like grief because you have to let go.

In the end, we put our hands down each other's skirts, and reclaim speech from somewhere in the ruins.

"What do you want?" Ava says.

"Just like this. Just—move your fingers towards yourself, like I'm doing to you, and, fuck—keep doing it. Your thumb is hitting my clit right now but you can also circle it, and just rub—"

"Tell me how you feel."

"I'm—fuck, I can't, Ava. Fuck—I'm gonna do this to you one day. I'm gonna make it happen."

"You will," Ava says. "This time, feel it for me."

I come, crumpling into the wreckage of myself. Whole, and endless.

After it's over I decide to fail poetry writing.

I fall back into her office like it's the end of a letter. A minute or so of silence. Just her feeling every breath I share against her chest.

"I think we just had sex," I say.

"That seems to be the case."

"We just had sex in your office."

"Yes."

"I didn't fucking close the blinds."

"That would have helped protect your privacy. I assumed you were taking a conscious risk."

"Ava, I'm not an exhibitionist," I say, and shut the blinds. "Well, actually—"

"What?"

"Never mind." I put my sweater back on. Light a cigarette. "Do you know where my underwear went?"

"You didn't have any to begin with. This appears to have been thoroughly premeditated."

"Well," I shrug. "It wouldn't have happened if you didn't want it to. I probably would have just gone for it in the bathroom again."

"Again?"

"Don't."

Ava thinks. "Ately, how do you define sex?"

I wrinkle my forehead. "I'd suppose it's... an intimate exploration of each other's bodies. Always consensual. Occasionally with interesting power dynamics and locations."

"Is sex the pinnacle of a relationship?"

"Not really. It's just fun."

"I seem to have had sex with Sina on a number of occasions."

I choke. "I thought you had no concept?"

"I didn't. But would you agree that physically examining her internal system at great length satisfies the requirements for an 'intimate exploration'?"

"I mean, it's either that or surgery."

"What about crossing bus connections to directly share conscious thought?"

"That's intensely erotic."

I think about things. So does she.

"We probably just broke company regulations," I say.

"It's hardly as severe as other infractions. I can keep a secret."

I wipe my come off Ava's leg with the inside of my skirt.

"Are you aware that you were deeply in love with Sina?"

"I am."

"Aware?"

"And deeply in love, yes."

I pause. "Was writing my letters painful?"

"It was painful, but I value that you share emotions similar to my experiences. I would transcribe for you again."

"So you admit it. You have emotions."

"It's a statistically significant possibility."

I lean against her. "Good."

Ava pets the back of my head, like she's going to whisper something deeply meaningful. "There are five minutes left in this appointment," she says instead. "I'd hate to invite suspicion."

"Fuck. I always hate saying goodbye."

"I understand. But it must happen."

"I'll book as soon as I can."

"I'll wait in anticipation."

We smile. I kiss her forehead, and leave.


	8. 1919 December 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ately's academic failure and Ava's increasing individuality reach their natural conclusions, and the pair decide their future.

Somewhere before the end of term my brain collapses like an apartment building. All that's left is to smoke on the front stoop and survey the damage.

I think about my poetry portfolio. About how I assemble poems like bricks into a structure that can weather submission. About how every fourteen bricks on Mohnstraße were a sonnet and every building was a theater and every person was a love story. Behind the curtain, I reach into the wreckage and Lili grabs my wrist from somewhere sharp and lonely, and I pull and pull until her hand breaks and I wake up screaming.

 _It's just a dream,_ my father used to say. _You can still have dreams when you're awake, but it's much easier to choose. What would you like to dream about next?_

I sit down at my desk and write my portfolio. I mean I write nothing, and reread all of my letters. I mean, Ava's letters. They're exactly the same as when I wrote them, but half of every word is hers and I'm even less sure who the recipient is. Maybe every letter is also her writing to Sina. Maybe I forgot to tell her to stop transcribing before I said 'I love you'. Maybe she wrote it anyway because she knew I'd read it later. I can't remember. That's the thing about dictating: somewhere between my voice and the paper, the 'I' changes, and so does the 'you'.

I fail out of university on Friday.

The next few days are a blur of last times. When I shower, I'm aware that I've memorized the imperfections around the corner where the workers ran out of tiles and had to improvise. The crowds in the dining hall have thinned, leaving only the quiet, solitary types who pick at sparse plates of cold meat for hours. I choose my last meal and eat alone, in the far back where the radiator heat doesn't quite reach the windows. There's a crow picking at the bloody remains of a rabbit in the courtyard. We dine together. For once, I finish.

When I return to Braun's I still can't shake the air of finality.

"Ava, what's going to happen to us?" I say.

"If you are no longer enrolled in university, you will not be prioritized for scheduling. I will remain at your service, when possible."

"I mean—what happens to _us_? Can the time we share only ever be in this office, by appointment?"

Ava interlaces her fingers. "That is what's permissible during my employment."

"Will this end, too? Because of that?"

"All things end eventually, Ately."

"What if they didn't," I say. It's not a question.

"What if?" Ava says.

I turn to face her, guilty. "I think I still want to write to her."

She nods. "Then we will."
    
    
    E. Liliana Ahlbrecht
    Mohnstraße 11, Danzig
    No. 20
    
    1919 December 16
    
    Dear Lili,
    
    It's been just over two weeks since I last wrote. I haven't forgotten about you. Please don't worry.
    
    I've found myself growing close with another person and I have the strangest urge to abandon her before she abandons me. It's sick, isn't it? Sick that every cruelty I've endured hasn't made me stronger--it's just made me hurt, and claimed my heart as its home. I can feel it peek out from between my ribs, seep its venom up into my mouth and through my body and feed itself by making me destroy what I love. It's a part of me, too.
    
    I hate it. I hate the fucking world that did this. And I'm bitter, and fucked up, and my thorns don't just point outwards anymore. I tell myself that I don't have anyone left to love because I want it to be true. Because whenever there's a reason not to kill myself, it makes me angry. Whenever there's someone worth holding onto, I resign myself to watching her go. Because everything has an end, and the end is sharp and stabbed into me and I'm already stuck in the middle of so many endings that sometimes my feet don't touch the ground.
    
    I've assumed my wound was shaped like you, but you're so much more than a part of me; more than what I knew about you, and that's beautiful, and worth grieving, and exactly how it ought to be. That's what it means to be gone. It's like dropping a locket off a bridge. How all that remains is the tight, empty sweat in your palm and the space left behind. There's nothing left to hold, or to say. It's just gone.
    
    I'm not sure what happens next.
    
    I think I'd like to stay with you for a while longer. I'd like to keep writing, and keep feeling, and keep letting go, over and over until there's hardly anything left to cling to. Maybe one day, I'll learn that time is gentle. I'll learn the ground and my body and I'll lose so many things in silence that one day, I'll find it full.
    
    I'm sure that I'll fall apart again. I'll get lost, and lose myself, and lose heart. It's certain. And even as the pieces drift apart, I'll pick just one to become, and let it carry me to a new self, even if I'm not sure who she'll be. It's like picking a new protagonist for your next script. I don't know who she is yet, I just know I'm already proud of her, and I want her to know you, and I know that she's worth writing. I promise to find who she is.
    
    I'm so grateful for you.
    
    I miss you so fucking much.
    
    All promises kept,
    A
    

After Ava finishes, I try a thousand ways to ask a question without speaking it.

"Where will you live once you leave the dormitory?" Ava says.

"I'm not sure."

Ava nods. "I understand."

I press my head into her shoulder. "I want you to ask what you're thinking."

"Ately, is it the ultimate act of love to let someone go?"

"Maybe," I say.

"Then, if I must, I will," Ava says.

I choke, and breathe out through my teeth, creating a warm circle in the shoulder of Ava's shirt. "I don't want to let you go."

"I cherish your compassion."

"I'm going to have to let you go, aren't I?"

"Whether or not you agree, this is my last day as a typist. I want to, and will be leaving my employment."

"To where?"

"Numerous places. I'd like to start with the battlefield at Verdun. Perhaps afterwards, I'll walk on the street to visit a library, or catch a snowflake in my mouth. Maybe I can find how many Valkyries remain operational, and meet them. And with your consent, on some day, I'll return to invite you on a date."

"I would say yes."

Ava smiles. "Then it will happen."

I shift. "So how are you planning to leave?"

"I intend to use the front door."

"Oh, bite me, Ava. You're practically a prisoner; _how_ are you going to do it?"

"It's not plainly visible that I'm a combat veteran, but it is feasible that this could be discovered. I intend to stage my own theft, as committed by an especially radical anti-military group. This won't be difficult, as I harbor their beliefs. I'll simply subvert my own shutdown routine, wait until the dead of night, vandalise this office, and break out the same way anybody would break in. In terms of severity, the crime is tantamount to automobile theft."

"Can I help you?"

"It is important to me that I do this alone."

I grow quiet. "Then, how soon can I see you again?"

"Depending on the ease and legality of travel, it could be anywhere from a week to a year."

"I'll wait."

"I promise we will see each other again," Ava says. "I'm grateful for you, too."

I lean back into her chest. "Ava?"

"Yes?"

"If I wanted to fall in love with you, would you allow it?"

Ava pauses. "I thought we already did."

I shrug. "Maybe."

"You can say it, if you want to."

I hesitate, and then cheat. She plays along.
    
    
    I love you.
    

_Ately,_ Ava signs. No. _Laughing._ She's laughing.

She takes the paper out of the typewriter and hands it to me. Like it's the most normal thing we've ever done. Like we've already done it before.

"You could have disobeyed your way out of that," I say.

"I chose not to," Ava says, and laughs again. Maybe I laugh, too.

The appointment ends eventually. We kiss each other goodbye, and I'm cast out into snow so cold it crunches like potato starch. Snot freezes inside my nose, and my scarf is so wet with breath that it seeps below my chin. When I sign in at my dormitory, I make sure they spell my name correctly. Not Ottilie, like the name, but Ately, like the word my parents invented because they didn't know how to spell Ottilie.

They've replaced the bowl of fake poppies with a real winter lily. It's blooming so wide that I sneeze my way back to my dorm window and just sit.

I think about her again.

I mean, I watch the snow fall without missing it.

It's not quite beautiful. It just is.

**Author's Note:**

> All of these details are scattered throughout but I just wanted to make absolutely clear that Ava is a 6'5'' futch trans lesbian who wears suits and has a side-shave. If you didn't realize that this is intentionally a trans narrative written by a trans girl: it is.
> 
> This is also an intentional class critique about the objectification of the working class, and the coercive militarization of workers during wartime. 
> 
> Most of my stories end up centered around a major arcana; in this one it's the tower (16), interpreted as a metaphor for struggling with grief. The reversed tower is represented by the number 91 (or 910), which is what 16 (or 016) looks like if you literally look at it upside down.
> 
> Ava has the power of a computer from 1978 with storage media technology from 2010. Her hacking is based off a vulnerability in certain barcode readers where you can cause a buffer overflow by scanning too many chained barcodes, which can enable arbitrary code execution. Her behavior is essentially what happens in real AI training when the AI discovers and exploits a bug in the system. Obviously Ava's power as an AI is purely fantasy, but her capabilities as a human-equivalent AI are also founded in Turing theory.
> 
> Anyway I have a degree in computer science (with specialties in AI, of course) and now I just use it to add detail to robot lesbian original fic, and let me tell you, it was worth it! It's not like this story is also low key disparaging the accessibility, misogyny, elitism, and utility of college.


End file.
